Customer Reviews

Digital Atsc Tv Box VGA Digital HDtv Tuner Receiver

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I order this unit on a Monday morning and it was shipped, by standard shipping, to my house the very next day (super fast). I have three computer monitors just laying around going to waste, so I order two of these units so that I could use two of the monitors as extra tv sets. When I hooked up the tuner boxes to my monitors I did not believe what a fantastic picture I have on both monitors. I own a few high end, high def tv's (lcd and plasma), and I am always having to playing around with the antenna to get a good high def digital reception. Most of the tv transmitters in my area are about 30 miles away from my house. Out of curiosity I hooked up one of these K-world tuners to my Sony hdtv and bypassed the tv's internal tuner. Oh-My-Gosh! The reception improvement was fantastic! No more messing around with having to perfectly aim the antenna, just aim the antenna in the general direction of the tv transmitters and you get perfect reception. I live in Toledo Ohio and I was getting just the local tv stations (18 in all), but with the K-world tuner hooked up I am pulling stations in from as far as Detroit Mich, and Windsor Canada which is about 60 miles away. In all I am now getting a total of 62 hdtv stations (a few are weather dependant). I must say that the monitor/tuner setup far exceeded the picture and reception qualities of my expensive tv's. For the money this K-world tuner is outstanding and I am ordering four more of these tuners for the rest of my equipment.

Last year I bought a Kworld usb HD tuner for my laptop computer. I really liked it, so I was eager to try Kworld's stand alone HD tuners.
The box is very good at picking up stations. I can get more than 40 digital channels just by putting the included pole antenna in an upstairs window. By the way, the included antenna has a magnetic base that is capable of defying gravity and it is really handy. I placed mine horizontally near the top of my window. My channels all lock in solid, and the picture is fabulous. The menu is easy to follow. For example, I easily made the picture brighter than the factory default setting. The instructions and the remote could be better. The remote has a couple buttons that reset the output; you can make your picture disappear if you hit them by accident. I am using the component outputs; I have not tried the vga outputs. This unit is set up to allow you to share a vga monitor with a computer. I also bought the DVI version of this box. On that unit, the picture is slightly off center, which causes the first digit of the channel to be off screen. I haven't found a fix for that on my television set. [I have to wonder why these units are not eligible for the $40 government coupons. I have 2 older hdtvs with no built in ATSC digital tuner. The eligible conversion boxes only put out 480i, which is not real high definition.] If you need an HDTV tuner for an older hdtv, try this unit first.

Great product. After alot of adjusting with the remote I finally have full 1080i. An improvement for the manual would be helpful. Also, this is the cheapest option I've seen. Got it on newegg for $59.99 w/ free shipping.

After 6 weeks, it broke, displaying a blank screen.
Can't even return it since it is past 30 days.
Build quality is very poor. Tuner and the remote look like cheap plastic parts just thrown together quickly. Cheap build not was apparent from picture; hence my poor purchasing decision. VERY poorly written manual.

I bought this product March 2009; as of July 2009, it is broken. It worked great initially, but in two short months it stopped working. I'll be contacting the manufacturer about this soon. Will keep you informed.

It does do what is says it will do. It tunes QAM channels and ATSC channels, which it is hard to find a box that will do that, but the picture quality is terrible. The sound quality is not good either. The way the connectors are layed out on the box it is impossible to place it on a shelf without seeing the cables. If you need a product like this I would look at Centronics ZAT502HD.

got it all installed, smiled, then it went wacko. It's as though the menu section is stuck on with the right arrow button stuck on. The volume control is always on full blast and can not be removed from the screen.... arghhhh!!!

havn't heard from the seller about a fix or a refund.

frustrating!

The first product I received was defective. I exchanged it to a new device and the experience was great. I use this device for my HD 16:9 projector in the backyard. With local channel in 1080i the viewing experience, big screen is awsome. It was also amazing to recieved a lot of OTA channels with the supplied antenna.

I recently bought a 42" LCD panel without a ATSC tuner, so I decided to buy this unit in order to be able to watch some digital and HD channels from my cable company. Therefore I bought this little unit, hook it to the LCD Panel and now I am getting those wanted channels. Quality of image is so so, not as good as the one on my Sony rear projection TV with his own ATSC tuner, but at least I am getting them.

Pros:
-Relatively cheap box
-Small and nice box
-Once you realize what those buttons mean in the remote you can set up the unit with realive ease

Cons:
-Awfull manual and remote
-Not so good image quality.

At the end I am happy with the unit and has been working fine so far (2-3 weeks).

I recently shut off my DirecTV - the expense was no longer justifiable - and went to OTA broadcast and NetFlix. Having purchased a couple of standard converter boxes for my NTSC televisions, I assumed the two-year-old 32" LCD Visio would be fine on its own, with its built-in ATSC tuner. Silly me. While my ten-year-old Sony with the converter was receiving all the local Detroit stations clearly with just a loop antenna, the Visio had terrible reception with a $40 amplified antenna. Forget about the loop antenna - the built-in tuner pulled in exactly one channel without that gain boost. After many complaints from my better half, I took a chance on the KWorld ATSC VGA tuner, reasoning that if it didn't help the Visio, I could at least deploy it with an older LCD monitor.

What a difference! Where the Visio tuner had trouble even with the high-tech Radio Shack starship antenna, the KWorld tuner pulled in everything with just its stubby little rod antenna. Clear, hi-def pictures, no drop-outs, no fussing with antenna positioning, and no more complaints. I used the component output into an open input on the TV with stereo audio (cables not included with the tuner), and picture quality is perfect.

I'm a guy, and a techie one to boot, so the notably uninformative manual didn't bother me too much. The Taiwanese do have a tradition to uphold, after all. The obviously cheap and difficult-to-operate remote bothers me a bit more, but once I take the time to teach the universal remote how to do the basic things, it shouldn't be a problem. All considered, I count this purchase a success.